Blood test for SCD diet

Tomorrow I'm starting the SCD diet (will make official thread/blog) and I wanted to monitor my results through blood work and was wondering what types of things I should have monitored so I can see if there's any improvement. I'm going to get my blood sugar levels tested to check for hypoglycemia but what else should I have included?

I assume you plan to do inflammatory markers: CRP and ESR?
You may already be at normal levels, but I imagine it would still be good to check these, as a way of monitoring if inflammation is lessening on the diet.

Wishing you the very best with it, KWalker. I would think that it's also important to have your iron and folate levels checked, and maybe zinc and magnesium too? David's probably the one best equipped to advise.
But what about working with a dietician on it? I asked my GP to refer me to one as I was concerned too about the balance of the diet. The dietician at first poo-pooed it, but after analysing a food diary she asked me to keep for a week, she was actually surprised at how balanced it was. The only thing she thought I was low in was iron-givers, and advised what other things to eat other than red meat which I couldn't tolerate at the time.
Have you decided what to do about the yoghurt?

helena101- yes I'm wanting to monitor inflammation but I wasn't sure what those would be called, so thank you!

Grumbletum- I also figured iron and magnesium would be important as well. I'm not too familiar with folate and zinc's role in the body are but if they are important it would be beneficial to include those as well. I'm going to have the doctor's on my campus monitor it almost like I'm doing it with supervision but I would definitely talk to them about seeing a dietician for even better supervision.

As far as the yogurt, I'm going to hold off for now and see how I do without it. It seems like a lot of work and I've been researching people's opinions on it and there was even a surprising number of people who said they do the diet without it because it wasn't tolerable. We have a little local health, organic, all natural, you name it type of store that I was going to look at to see if they would have any home made legal yogurt and if they did I was going to try that first before I attempt to make my own.

Glad that helps! With regards to keeping track of inflammation, you may want to consider doing a faecal Calprotectin test once a month as well. This is much more sensitive than CRP and ESR and will give you a better idea. They don't do it everywhere though, and its a stool test, not a blood test, so I don't know how feasible it will be for you to get it done. I live in Greece and I have to send my samples to England to get them tested...

hmm okay. I've heard of the fecal test but don't know if I've ever had one. I would feel so bad for the person who has to look at mine lol. Are the blood tests and stool samples really that accurate when determining inflammation levels? It seems like it's so much less work than doing a colonoscopy.

It depends. Some people have normal blood work even when flaring. Mine was only marginally above normal when I was in bad shape (busily forming a peri-anal fistula). So for me, blood work doesn't tell me much. But it's still good to have a base-line before you change your diet/treatment as you can still see if there is a general upward or downward trend over the course of a few months.
Calprotectin has been REALLY useful for me for this reason. It goes up or down A LOT depending on how I'm doing, and numbers go up well before a flare for me, so I have time to correct things. It's not feasible to do a colonoscopy every few months, but this way you can get a good idea if the state of your insides is getting better or not..
I wouldn't NECESSARILY worry if the numbers don't start going down right away, healing takes time...
I wish you the best of luck, I'll be following your thread!

I agree that CRP, ESR, and fecal calprotectin are must have's if you are planning to try and treat via diet. You want to get these done NOW so that you have a baseline for comparison. I'd also get a CBC so you can have baseline there.

Thanks. I'll mark these down and I go back to school on Monday (January 7th) so I'll make an appointment and get that done

I followed it for a while and I don't know if it helped me. The book from Elaine Gloria who formulated SCD with her doctor has everything about the diet you ever need, a lot of recipes in the back if you want to follow them.

You can lose weight really easily on this diet because her main and also only rule is to avoid all polysaccharides, she does allow for monosaccharides like honey. It's just so easy to lose weight fast on this diet that keeping an eye on weight might help.

yeah, I'll be keeping an eye on my weight as well. I was originally concerned about losing weight as well but Charliegh's son is on the diet and currently gaining weight. I will be using different nuts for protein and will have to make sure I eat enough calories during meals.

I just got back from our big appointment with the GI so I can tell you exactly what he is monitoring if you want?

Sedimentation Rate
CBC and differential
C-reactive Protein
Comprehensive metabolic panel
Vitamin D 25 hydroxy

He also sent me home with some occult blood sample cards